Keeping active during the coronavirus outbreak

Screen time can be a useful tool in keeping active. There are lots of things online for children and parent of all ages. Here are just a few of our favourites:

• Joe Wicks' Youtube Channel has fun workouts to keep the kids entertained, as well as full blown workouts to get grown ups moving too!
• Change4Life and Disney Shake Up for quick, easy and fun 10-minute bursts of activity inspired by your favourite Disney characters.
• Yoga cosmic kids uses storytelling to make yoga fun and help keep kids strong and calm.

Why not grab some bits and pieces around the house and create your own mini obstacle course? It doesn’t need to be fancy, just set out some things they can run around, jump over or throw. You could even get creative and make some medals for the winners.

Grab some bowls or cups and place them around the room, then get some balls to use – scrunch up some paper if you need to – and challenge your kid to get a ball into each cup. You can make it trickier by asking them to step further and further away from the bowls.

Mix it up a little by writing a letter on a piece of paper and placing it in each cup. Once the ball has landed in the cup the letter can be removed, the challenge is to get all the letters and make up the hidden word.

Who can build the tallest tower? Find something stackable in your house: wooden blocks, Lego, cereal boxes or even your sofa cushions. Just let them take turns each to see who builds the tallest tower. See how high their imagination takes them.

The last thing you need to be doing is looking out for breakables when balls are flying round the house. Why not use balloons instead? Blow up a balloon and use it as a substitute for all ball activities. Can you header it back and forth? Or why not tie a bit of string to two chairs and have a game of house volleyball? There are endless ways to have fun with balloons indoors.

If you have a hallway why not turn this into a maze? Using string, tape or items of clothing. Just tie things at different heights and challenge your kid to get through without touching anything.

Make your very own circuit class for your family. Take a few sheets of paper, write a different activity on each one and place them around the room. The idea is that everyone does the activity for a set amount of time, then you all move on to the next one.

Try to make the activity and times relevant to your family, and their ability. Tasks could be as simple as 5 jumps, 5 hops, 5 star jumps to 2 minutes of sit ups, 2 minutes of planking and 2 minutes of running on the spot.

Run like a cheetah, jump like a frog, waddle like a penguin or slither like a snake. Why not have fun taking turns at choosing an animal and deciding the action that goes along with this? To make this even more fun, why not make the noises of your animal – ribbit!

Hide items around your house for the kids to find. The more difficult you make it the more energy they will use up finding the items. Putting items at different heights can get little bodies jumping and squatting their way around the house in no time.

To make this even more fun, you could even try to leave clues to where things are hiding and offer a reward if they can find all the items in a given time.

Think about what your child is interested in, or classes they usually go to, and see if you can recreate some of it at home. For example, for a budding gymnast could you create a beam to practise balancing on at home? This could be as simple as a line of tape across the floor so they can practise walking in a very straight line.

Set a timer and see if your kids can tidy away all their toys before the timer goes off. Something to get their heart rates up, and give you a helping hand too. Win – win.

To lift everyone’s mood, put your favourite music on and dance, dance, dance!

Yoga is not only a great way of stretching out and getting fit, it’s good for the mind too. You don’t need any fancy equipment – just a space on the floor and some comfy clothes. There are loads of free classes available on YouTube and lots of different styles of yoga to try. Yoga instructor Adriene has a good video for teens – have a go as a family or let the kids find their own style.

Got a phone? Then they can make a movie! And as the point of this is to get exercise, the more action the better! While James Bond-style stunts may not be the safest idea, how about making a training montage, Rocky style? Put on a hoodie, crank up the music and get them running up and down the stairs, having a go at press ups and sit ups and punching those cushions.

Juggling is great for eye-hand co-ordination and is good exercise too – especially at the beginning, when you spend more time picking up balls from the floor than keeping them in the air! Check YouTube for free tutorials and have a go.

If you have the space and a rope, skipping is a brilliant way for everyone to burn up energy. It’s not just for little kids in the playground – it’s a favourite exercise of boxers and many other athletes. Another move for the training montage, maybe?

To get the kids off the sofa and onto their feet, how about getting them to try an online dance class? Y-Dance offers classes in jazz and fun and funky commercial dance, while budding Billy Elliots can check out these classes from Scottish Ballet.